Risk & Business Magazine Sterling Insurance Spring 2017 | Page 14

ONE DAY A WEEK
One Day A Week
This Entrepreneur More Than Doubled His
M
Revenue By Cutting His Hours
urray Seward cut his
hours to 10 hours a week,
yet he has grown his
Survivor-style adventure
outing business from $3
million to $8 million in revenue in just
three years. Here’s how.
In 2013, Murray Seward’s firm, the
Outback Group of companies, was stuck
at around $3 million in annual revenue.
Since then, revenues in its core business
— consisting of team-building operations
Canadian Outback Adventures & Events
and American Outback Adventures &
Events — have grown 166% and profits
have ticked up by 333%. Meanwhile,
Seward has reduced his hours to just one
day a week, though his company also owns
a significant stake in three other ventures:
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Corporate Explorer Training, Canadian
Outback Rafting Company, and Vancouver
Christmas Market.
Seward’s secret? He became more
disciplined about how he runs his
32-employee, Vancouver-based company.
After Seward became a shareholder in
the firm in 1999, the Outback Group
grew gradually. Like many enthusiastic
entrepreneurs, Seward threw himself into
working around the clock to spark growth,
but he couldn’t move the needle much.
DIFFERENT APPROACH
While chatting about the business at a
hockey game, a friend suggested he try
a different approach—one that wasn’t
built on hunkering down at the office.
Seward tried it, and since then, he has seen
dramatic growth at the company, founded
in 1992. “Profitability has gone through
the roof,” says Seward, the firm’s president.
“It just blows me away.”
This year, his company will run 2,500
corporate team building events and
leadership training programs in North
America but it has become so efficient that
Seward has pared his hours dramatically—
to just 10 hours a week. Working only on
Thursdays, he has freed plenty of time
to do what he loves: spending time with
his wife and children, coaching baseball,
fishing, volunteering as a mentor in a group
that teaches entrepreneurship to young
people and reading business books—one
of his passions. “I suck up those books,” he
says.
So how did he pull it off? Seward used